God's hand saves my life in Alaska

   After driving the wild and wonderful Alcan Highway to Alaska, our first summer in the state was comprIsed of experiencing the natural wonders and wildlife so evident everywhere we turned. However it also included experiencing many equally spectacular wonders of a spiritual life that we were just beginning to comprehend. After living our first three months in our small dome tent in a campground on the outskirts of Anchorage, we moved up in the world by purchasing a used fourteen-foot-long travel trailer that we parked in a small campground within the city limits. Betsy found a job at a preschool, while I began working twelve hour days with a crew framing houses. We made sure we were in walking distance from the small Quonset hut shaped church we had discovered in a low-income neighborhood on the north side of Anchorage.  The church was mostly attended by military persons from both the army’s Fort Richardson and the Airforce’s Fort Elmendorf bases.  (Today these are joint bases.) 

The congregation of 120 or so people was about 40% black, 20% Hispanic, 20% native, and 20% white.  More importantly, it was one hundred percent spiritual.  Hardly a service could pass without us seeing a miracle of some sort.  The pastor was Norman Jones, a short squatty man that seemed to us a giant at the time because of his spiritual qualities. There was nothing or no one that he would not pray for, and when he prayed, he expected results.

          One late Wednesday afternoon I was driving our 1965 International Scout home from a job site across town. Betsy would be waiting for me in our modest little travel trailer. She was 7 months pregnant so even turning around in the trailer was difficult for her. The preschool she was working in was only a mile away from our home so she would walk home each day and wait for me to get home.

            While driving home that day traveling down one of the main thoroughfares in the suburbs just outside of down town Anchorage, I approached a lighted intersection. The light gave me the right of way so I proceeded into the intersection. However, once in the intersection, I could hear for the first time emergency sirens blaring. Entering the intersection at the same time was a fire engine. It had swerved into the oncoming traffic lane to cross the intersection and was then angling across the intersection from my left to get back on the right side of the road. By the time I saw the fire engine it was too late. Although I instinctively swerved to the right to attempt to avoid the clearly unavoidable collision, the fire truck struck me right over my front left tire and sent me spinning, 

            The impact from the collision was jarring. My Scout was spung around in a complete circle, ending up facing the direction I had been going when impact occured.  The windshield shattered inward sending broken glass throughout the cab.  The impact caused my face to hit the steering wheel, breaking it in half (the steering wheel not my face). The front axel snapped and both front tires lay flat on the road while the transfer case broke loose and ended up about 30 feet down the road.  The tools from my job site, including a generator and compressor, along with saws and drills and nail guns, had piled up just behind my head. I had brought a piece of plywood home that day to build a dog house and that plywood stood up against the back of the seat keeping the tools from smashing into my head.  One of my dogs remained in the Scout while the other had been catapulted through the broken windshield and down the street. (we would not find her for several days)

            Sitting there in the middle of the intersection I could see cars and people all about the scene.  The fire truck had continued across the intersection, stopping on the right-hand side.  From striking the steering wheel with my face, I had blood pouring from a deep wound above my upper lip.  I am sure I was in shock, but I was able to take the entire situation in as if it were in slow motion. While I sat there spitting out the blood that had begun to flow profusely from my face, a young woman ran up to the front of my shattered vehicle.  Looking in at me and seeing the broken vehicle, glass, wheels, and I am sure my bloody face, she then began to shout “get away it is going to blow”. She then quickly  ran off in frantic panic (right out of a movie script).  Fortunately, the fire fighters did not take her advice.  They soon approached my vehicle and began to assure me help was on its way.

          From the angle of the impact, the passenger side of the Scout was completely caved in, the dash being only inches from the seat. If Betsy had been in the vehicle with me, she would have been crushed.  My door was also buckled and the fire fighters initially could not get it open.  Soon they brought a tool to force the door open so they could get to me. As I waited, I realized both of my legs were pinned against the underside of the dash.  I began to worry if they had been injured.  When the door finally fell open, the fire fighters admonished me to sit still so they could check me out.  I had other plans.  Worried that my legs were injured, I pushed the two fire fighters back and stepped out on the pavement to see if I could walk. Once I was convinced my legs were still working, I sat back down so they could do their work.

            Betsy and I had worked hard all summer, saving every dime we could so that we could purchase remote property in the valley north of Anchorage.  Because of this, I was down to one pair of Levis for work and another better pair for church.  The first thing the fire fighter did when they got me seated and saw all the blood that by then covered me from my neck town to the bottom of my pants, was to cut my pants from the cuff up to the crotch. I almost punched him. This was my only pair of work pants!  They told me they were looking to make sure I did not have another severe injury on my legs, maybe an artery, that would account for all the blood.  It ended up that all the blood that was covering me came from a deep cut just above my upper lip.

            After doing some preliminary things to stop the blood flow, the fire fighters loaded me into an ambulance to take me to the hospital that was only a short distance up the road. Once there they left me in the emergency room to wait for an available doctor.  After a half an hour waiting, I think my mind settled down enough to think clearly about the situation.  The hospital seemed overwhelmed with emergency patients. Also, we had no insurance and little money. Deciding  my injuries were not that bad, I quietly walked out the emergency room door.

 A young nurse came running out after me asking why I was leaving, saying it was obvious that I needed medical care. I told her I could not afford to stay and that I was going to walk home.  She grabbed me by the arm and drug me back into the waiting room.  She then took me over to a small side room where she pulled out some antiseptic towels and a few butterfly bandages.  She instructed me to clean my wound well, shave off the part of my mustache around the wound, and then use the butterfly bandages to try to close it up. She said that if it did not work, I would need to come back for medical care.

Leaving the hospital, I began walking down the highway in the direction of Betsy and our trailer, estimating they were about two miles away.  We did not have a phone so even if she had a vehicle, I could not call her to come get me.  Less than a quarter mile from the hospital, a police car pulled over next to me along the side of the road. I was still covered in blood so I imagine I made a very suspicious subject.  When I told him I was in the recent accident just down the road at the intersection, he was amazed I was out and walking around.  He offered me a ride and only a few minutes later we drove up in front of our little trailer. 

A very pregnant Betsy came running out. A neighbor had driven by the intersection and seen them lifting our mangled vehicle with a fork lift onto a flatbed truck. They had told Betsy that they did not believe I could have survived the accident. What made this even more terrifying for Betsy was that when she was eleven years old, a police car had pulled up in front of her home to inform her mom that her father had died. Running out to the police car, Betsy embraced me with such intensity that I soon discovered even more parts of my body that had been bruised in the accident.

After cleaning my wound as best she could, Betsy ran over to the neighbor who had informed her of the accident and asked if she could borrow their phone. She called a couple from the church to see if we could get a ride to service that night.  At church, as I knew I would be, I was prayed over by Pastor Jones and several other members of that congregation. They prayed that my cut face would be healed. I had cleaned off the blood, shaved a small area of my mustache, and applied three butterfly bandages, but the wound was still very obvious. The severity of the cut was such that before applying the bandages, I could stick my finger completely through the one and one half inch cut into my mouth.

Waking up the next morning I struggled to get out bed; every inch of my body ached.  When I went into our small bathroom, I looked in the proportionately small mirror on the wall to see how my cut would appear after having a full night to swell up.  I could see the bandages, but was having a hard time seeing the wound. I had been given several other butterfly bandages by our neighbor, so I decided I should take the old ones off to better inspect the wound.  When the bandages came off, I could see no wound!  There was no swelling, no cut, no residual blood, nothing but a very healthy-looking upper lip exposed by a small shaved area.

Today I only have a remembrance of this experience, my upper lip showing no scar or disfigurement.  When throwing out the blood stained and cut up blue jeans I had been wearing, it presented a conflicting testimony to my then scarless lip.  We were able to return to church that Sunday with not only the verbal testimony, but with the physical evidence that the Lord had heard those prayers uttered that Wednesday night at church. Everyone wanted to see my healed lip!  I had walked out of the hospital and into a place of faith where God, who specializes in those things, could do His work.

        Only two days later a friend would drive me to the wrecking yard where they had deposited my broken vehicle. I needed to retrieve the tools that belonged to my boss.  The friend, not a believer in Jesus Christ, stood with me outside the wreckage amazed I had come out alive. His words were “it looks like there was a hand formed around where you sat in the drives seat”. There was!